Camp Tales 2013 Part IV: Haunted "Western Hotel"

After fleeing the frightening experience with The Texans at the Ouray Museum, we were terribly thirsty.  We needed beers quite badly, I'm afraid.  Dooooders looked parched, her complexion pale and her demeanor listless.  Her walk was no longer lively, and she looked alarmingly dehydrated.  Dr. Duder promptly wrote out a "Beer-prescription," and Dooders suggested we look for a place to fill it.

So we found ourselves visiting a few places (all with great stories, mind you), but this place was the most entertaining by far because it was so intriguing, and well, so spooky.

As in, 1980 called.  Kubrick's got a new film out.  You might recall it, The Shining.

Apparently, this hotel is one of the few remaining 1880's wooden frame hotels left standing in the old West today.  My guess, is that is because it's not burned down.  So many old west towns lost their wooden frame buildings to fire.  Leave it to some drunken sot to kick over a lantern in a barn, and poof.  Fifty or more years of history down the drain.  Especially, saloons, which are of course my favorite thing in the world and the only place I feel truly at home.

We didn't SEE any ghosts as much as felt an atmosphere of weirdness.  Firstly, no one who worked there appeared to be a local.  In fact, no one who worked there was even from America.

When you're in small town, America, this is just weird. 

"How old is this place? Who built it?  What is its history?" I anxiously queried noting the 100-year-old-looking back-bar. The doe-faced server, young enough she could have been my grand-daughter, looked at me blankly then ran outside and read the date on the outside of the hotel.

"1891," she announced as she walked back in.  Rocket science, I thought.

How could anyone work here and not be curious about this place?  How could you work here and not know anything?  Besides being mentally-challenged, there's really no excuse.

An 8-foot tall, impossibly-ancient, painting of an attractive, naked lady graced the bar behind her, which was alarming on many counts.  Firstly, no respectable Victorian woman of the era of this bar would have ever posed in the nude.  Secondly, what led this portrait to be here behind a bar in Ouray, Colorado?  Who was she?  What was the story, damnit!?

"Who's that?" I asked curiously pointing to the painting.  Certainly, it was a madam of the night from the 1880's.  No doubt, someone with a notorious history a mile long.  Maybe she was murdered behind the bar by one of her many young, handsome lovers who was jealous of her many sordid gentlemen-callers.  I waited in anticipation for undoubtedly a juicy answer.  Doooders blinked and set down her beer, looking at our bartender expectantly.

When I'm on vacation, I want to see the local color.  A red-headed local named Flo, who knows everyone's business going back 100 years.  An answer such as, "1891, and it was my Great-great Aunt Ethel's sister-in-law who everyone knew was a concubine, scoundrel and thief.  In fact, legend has it that blah, blah, blah," evoking a fat tip on the bar from Doooder and I.

"I dunno," she said rinsing a glass.  "I'm from the Netherlands," she added as if that explained everything.

I sighed heavily.  If there's ANYTHING a writer can't stand more, is a story that's left untold.  And if there's ANYTHING that a former news-reporter hates is a dead-end.

But this wasn't the only disappointing encounter we had that day with a young woman.

Stay tuned.

Camp Tales 2013, part III: Cultural Day

 

 

Ahhhh, the Ouray Historical Museum, Ouray Colorado.  What's one of my favorite things about camping out-of-state?  Why, checking out the local culture, of course.

 

Doooders and I pulled on clean shirts, brushed our teeth, slapped a little deodorant on to be respectable, then trotted off to see the museum this day.  Cultural sites, usually local bikers' bars, gabby coffee houses, tasty diners, small volunteer-run museums are all places where you can tap into the pulse of a community and find out what it's really like.

 

This particular museum, I was thrilled to find, is housed in the old former "Miner's Hospital."  So I was overjoyed.  Maybe I'd catch a ghost on my camera, I eagerly thought, as the stairs going up to the second floor creaked impressively under my feet.  I copiously snapped  pictures, hoping to catch a shadowed form, perhaps a miner in his last throes of death, I imagined.

 

The museum was silent--the way museums that are likely haunted should be.  Volunteer curators whispered to each other as if they were librarians, everyone talking softly under their breath.

 

 

Whoever put the exhibits together had a fairly dubious sense of humor, I found, on the second floor, in the room that was the old "Operating Room."  The placard on an easel near the exhibit cheerily reminded us, there was no such thing as anesthesia or cleanliness during operations.

 

A mannequin from the 1960's dressed as a miner from the 1800's lay on a gurney with a fake blood soaked towel wrapped around what appeared to be an amputated leg.  A bottle of Jack Daniels sat jauntily by his side.  How cheery, I thought.  Nearby, a 1960's female mannequin dressed as a nurse with an astoundingly bad wig, looked on, holding a scalpel.  It was all rather alarming in a ghoulish sort of way, and I hoped the local grade-schools thought twice about taking a field trip here.

 

Suddenly, the quiet solitude of the museum was broken by boisterous voices from outside. 

 

"Ahhhhhh!" Dooders and I shouted as we accidentally bumped into a stuffed black bear with a dog-like collar reading "Jimmy" on it.  "Cripes," I exclaim.  Apparently, "Jimmy" had been the miners' doctor's pet, but had to be taken down as he had gotten "too friendly with visitors."

 

I looked out the window and saw a gigantic truck, a dualie, the kind you'd expect to see in the Dukes of Hazard, one that had to be driven by someone with a name like Rooffus or Bufford.  I glanced at the license plate and noted it was from Texas.  I looked down the stairwell, to a large Texan family loudly entering the museum. 

 

I say "large" because all of them were large, fleshy things, sort of reminding me of something from Honey Boo-boo.  There was a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a great-great grandmother, a mom and a dad in loud tourists' shirts and an assortment of mewling children.

 

But what struck me as amazing was their deep southern accents.  I could hardly understand them.  It was as if they were from a foreign country speaking a different language.

 

"Hey Paw, whaaaaaaaaaaaazzz dat dare?" the littlest boy asked his father and pointing a fleshy hand to a mining tool.

 

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayle, daaaaat's a shit-shoveler, sawwwwwn."  Then the father proceeded to read every placard to every single solitary exhibit aloud, in astoundingly high volumes, to everyone in the family--to everyone in the museum, I might add.

 

The windows shook as he thunderously spoke.  Glass figurines threatened to topple.  I wanted to shout, "SILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and sternly point to the sign on the wall to be quiet, but the Texan family treated the museum as a carnival, everyone gleefully shouting, hopping about and reading every placard in the place in voluminous tones.

Doooders, and I immediately retreated to the basement, but the Large-and-in-charge Texans followed us down there, annoyingly reading everything that they saw slowly, loudly, in bellowing tones.  We ran to the mining exhibit, but they gleefully followed us there, too.

 

Worse still was the awful stench of Axe the father wore.  He must have sprayed the entire bottle on that day, coating his hair, skin, clothing, hat and shoes with it.

 

It gave Doooder a headache, so we escaped to the rock-exhibit in the other part of the basement, but the Texans followed us to there, too.  It was if we were all playing hide-and-go seek.

 

"OMG," Dooders moaned holding her head.  "That Axe-man is giving me a migraine."

 

"Don't worry Doooder.  I'll find a place for us to hide."  But there weren't any places, and The Texans were happily trotting around the corner to greet us.

 

I looked for an escape hatch, an emergency exit, but there was nothing.

 

So we knew our time was up, admitted defeat and headed to the haunted hotel bar down the street for brews and aspirins. 

 

Doooder's headache abated; the beer flowed, and the Texans never followed us there, thank goodness .   .   .  Stay tuned! 

Camp Tales 2013: Lower Calf Falls, part II

 

 

So where was I?

 

Finally, we got to the end of the trail to our reward: a cascadingly beautiful waterfall, droplets splaying out, catching in the light of the sun and reflecting it back like diamonds.  Others had stumbled there, too, and were either passed out on the beach, recovering (or praying their gratitude--it was hard to say), as others re-hydrated in the cool water. 

 

I stripped off my boots and jumped into the waterfall.  Immediately, my burning skin cooled; my mosquito bites ceased itching, and I was in heaven.

 

Everyone was ooing and ahhhing.  Dooooders snapped off a few pictures and changed into her swimsuit behind a clump of bushes.  About an hour later, completely re-hydrated, I was ready to go when an amazing thing happened.

 

I got my second wind.

 

I'm always slow to start, but when I get my second wind, I'm pretty much capable of anything--running marathons, lifting small trailer homes, carrying a horse, toting military tanks.  Besides, I had 3 bottles of water left, and I was re-hydrated.

 

"Come on, Dooooders, let's step up the pace," I exclaimed joyfully hiking ahead of her.  Doooders, going too fast and hard in the beginning, had used up all her energy and merely grunted as I trotted by.  Suddenly remembering the small bottle of Malibu rum in the cooler of the car, I never felt more elated and for the fun of it, took off at a brisk trot, passing other slow hikers as Doooder labored behind me huffing and puffing, her former zap and Marine-Corps drill instructor-zeal entirely gone.

 

"You OK on water?" I called out joyfully behind me.  Dooders didn't answer, merely grunted.

 

Record time was made skipping back to the vehicle, Doooders laboring behind me, entirely soaking wet from perspiration, purple-faced, and making wheezing noises on occasion. 

 

I was in heaven.  Not only had I figured the rum would be delightfully chilled by now, but I also recalled two light beers were also in the bottom of that cooler.

 

Suddenly, under my foot, I felt a flapping on my sole.  It was like the slapping sound you hear when you walk in flip flops.

 

I look down and see that I had entirely blown out the soles of my sturdy Merrill's.  I'd literally hiked my own boots to their death.

 

But who cared?  I had Malibu rum in the cooler. 

 

"Unlock the trunk, Doooder," I call out joyfully since I'd made it to the vehicle first, Dooder stumbling, lurching and mumbling incoherently behind me.

 

Disregarding the children scattered throughout the parking lot with their families, I tilted the wonderful concoction down my throat in ecstasy as Dooooders grappled with several water bottles chugging them as fast as she could.  Her hair was matted to her head in an alarming fashion, and her face was the color purple of the irises in my front yard.

 

"You OK?" I ask.  Dooders didn't answer, only cracked open another water bottle and sucked it down.  I thought she'd pour the last one over her head, but she drank it then refilled it from a spigot outside the vehicle.

 

It's hard to say what was better: finally getting into that waterfall, or getting into the goodies in the cooler.

 

But it was damned well worth it.  Stay tuned for more "Camp Tales."

 

 



 

Camp Tales 2013: part 1, Calf Creek Falls Hike, Utah

Pretty fluffin' amazing, huh?  This is where Doooders and I went on vacation in southern Utah.  And it wouldn't be summer without some good old-fashioned "Camp Tales" right?

 

Well, the hike wasn't what I would call "easy" nor did it offer the worthless ratings-scale that the park service usually offers from "Vigorous" to "Easy."

 

It did say, "Walking can be strenuous, especially in hot weather."  Moronically, I somehow missed this tiny warning in  .008 sized font on my pamphlet.

 

"Doooooder," I stammer breathlessly almost 20 minutes into the hike as I'm covered in perspiration and mosquito-bites, "Did you pack the booze?" I whine.  We brought a tiny bottle of Malibu coconut flavored rum to commemorate the end of the hike, and I needed a nip, NOW.  As in right the fuck NOW.  My mouth watered just thinking of it.

 

"Why no, I thought you did," she replied non-chalantly.  I stifled a whimper and prayed she was kidding.  She wasn't.

 

"N-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!!!  We MUST have booze after this hike.  Let's run back to the car and get it," I pleaded.

 

"No, we must press forward," says Dooders as she marches on, reminding me very much of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket.  Soon, I alarmingly realize that I'm very much short on my water supply.  It's about then that I start feeling stabbing pains in my calves and turn my mind to more pleasant topics such as dehydration and heat-stroke.  Walking through the southern Utah desert is very much like parading through two feet of powdered sugar.  You can never seem to make much progress.  Your feet sink through the 145 degree sand, trying to find purchase while you're stomping slowly through it, marching quite similar to how a zombie wearing snowshoes might march. 

 

"I . . .can . . . no . . . longer go on.  You might have to go on without me," I announce after about 2 hours in.  I fall over a rock and gasp for air.

 

"Oh, you'll be fine.  Think how great it'll feel to be at the falls in the cool, icy water," Doooder replies cheerfully.

 

"I . . . NEED. . . beer," I gasp.  Doooders only shakes her head and we plod on.

 

I suddenly feel for what the Mormons must have endured on their desperate journey through the desert.  My knees hurt; my skin feels like it's peeling off my body I am so hot.  I'm starving, and my back hurts.  Even my eyelashes hurt.  A bevvy of mosquitoes attack me, and one even bites me inside my ear which was simply the last straw.

 

"Acckkkkkkkk!  Jezus!" I scream and sort of throw a full blown temper-tantrum, jumping up and down, purple-faced, hair standing on end, slapping mosquitoes and giving an amazing show to the group of Asian hikers who walk past me, carefully avoiding any eye-contact.  "When the FUCK does this hike end?" I scream.

 

By now, even Doooders begins to wonder if there's really a waterfall at the end.

 

"It's just around this corner," she says dubiously, but of course it's not.

 

Finally, after about a dozen, "It's just right around this corner's" we hit the falls about an hour later.

 

More later.   I promise.

 

 

 

Older Dudes Dating Way Younger Chicks, are you fucking kidding me?

Me and my MAIN Man, Bennie.  Bennie goes for older broads; he's got good taste.

Anyway, today, as I was cruising home from the gym, I saw this dude's S.U.V. who've I'd admired from afar since he's an engineer at the same place that shares my gym (not the same engineer as the guy who's crushing on me, different one this time).  He looks like Justin Bateman only with Drew Carey glasses.  Hot.  Intelligent.  Witty.  I'd put him at 40-something.

One day last year we bumped into each other, and exhanged a few words.  Since then, and the explosive hotness I've felt since then, I've made sure I look hot while cruising by his office window as I head to the gym.

So, today, I was splitting from the gym and rode by Murphy's, this trendy gastro-pub, when I noticed his S.U.V.  Since his S.U.V. stands out in a crowd with its Yakima on top and many bicycle stickers, I knew it was him.  Already, because of his outdoor-enthusiast stickers all over the Yakima, I know we have a ton in common right outta the gate.

Excitedly, I pulled in and went to the patio.  There he was.

GORGEOUS.  Geek Sheik, that he is.  He was sitting with a slightly feminine looking man.

So I plopped down at the outside bar and thought, "He's gay."  Oh, well.  Maybe we can be friends at least some day, do a little biking together, sigh.

Then his friend leaves.

And Hottie walks right by me to go to the restroom.  I wonder if he recognizes me.  How can he not, I wonder as I've been going to this particular gym for years.  And well, damn it, I look good.

But he then goes back to his seat.  A few minutes later a young lady, easily only 25 years old and beautiful sits down next to him.

I study them in the covert way that only I can do.

I note that this young lady is trying to look older (more mature) than she is in years, hence, sophisticated sunglasses, hair in a bun, Ina Garten-style neck scarf that no one her age would wear.  She's as pretty as me, but 25 years ago.

Then she notices me noticing them, only she must not say anything to him, for he never turns around.  Instead, she puts on her dark sunglasses, circa Jackie O'Nasis era.  This is obviously a ploy to watch me, while I'm watching them but appear undetected, for it's not sunny at all where they are sitting.  I'm a fucking writer, a natural detective and damned good at what I do.

Meanwhile, the guys sitting next to me, total strangers, embark on a hillarious conversation about a drunk that they're watching who's passed out a couple tables away.  They engage me, and I pay attention to them for awhile.  Eventually, they leave.  Bummer.  So I go back to watching Hottie and his baby girl.

I was totally confused by Hottie and why he'd be hanging out with this INFANT when there's obviously well-seasoned, hillarious, wild hotter women out there, well, say like me.  Why isn't she snagging some 25 year old with his MBA?  Why my hottie?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 1945 called, and Bogie wants his fedora back.  I GET that in the "old" days men went for young broads, because men back then, were spoiled rotten in a society that doted on  white men and the privies that they got.

But this is 2013.

What. The. Fuck. Gives?

Summer time, Summer time

Me at the gym, sporting different hair these days for summa-time, summa-time.

So what's new?  Not much.

I met my friend last month, and we had cocktails and a fabulous dinner at Enigma, then he had to dash back home (a couple hours east of here) for work.  He's an engineer and is currently wearing two hats at his workplace.  Is he "hot" like I usually go for, not really.  But he's not fugly at all.  In fact, he has a nice smile and kind eyes.   And he's tall, in shape, etc.  So, we'll see.

And we're friends, and I LIKE it.

I was having a conversation with Cookie yesterday over a beer, about kids, being a single mother, dating.  (I have no kids, but I am a single-doggie mother).  And "dating"  hahahahahahha.  Whatever.

She said, "You know, I just can't see dating at this time.  A blended family, everyone getting along.  I just can't do it.  I don't have time.  My kids take up my time."  I told her I didn't blame her, and I know TWO women who, while their kids were under 18, refused to date at all, focusing their engeries on simply raising their kids.  She said she couldn't agree more, but that her sister had chastised her for not wanting to date anyone.  I, however, commend her.

As it should be.

I'm not sure why women rush into dating so quickly.  I've been "done with dating" since last August.  I can only do friendship first, and well, anything else has simply got to wait.

Anything worth anything is worth waiting for, not rushing through, folks.  But that's my "life of hard knocks" talking, my "truth" as it will.

More later.

They'll be some upcoming "Camp Tales," as Doooders gets here soon.

New Friends and Summer on the Horizon

Ahhhhh, spring is here.

Or so we think.  But I hope it is.

It's Friday, time to flee, and time to meet a new friend.  I'm excited to make a new friend, for we share one big thing: Northern Exposure.

Isn't that grand?

More later.